M S Subbulakshmi and her music - Part 8 - Syama Sastry : Mayamma & Kanakasaila viharini
In this post, I will take up two Syama Sastry krithis sung by MS Subbulakshmi. The greatness of Syama Sastry (as well as his two contemporaries) is that he could take up what many consider a 'minor' raga and compose a krithi of great seriousness and grandeur in that raga. For example, Ahiri is considered to be a 'minor' raga, in the sense that it does not give much scope of kalpana of an artist and has limited prayogas. Yet, Syama Sastry created a gem of a krithi in this raga, 'mayamma,' which has gravitas and oozes karuna rasa. (Dikshitar too took up this raga and created a mammoth Kamalamba krithi, while Tyagaraja created the brilliant 'adaya sri.') Similarly, Syama Sastry took up another raga with limited scope, Punnagavarali, and created a 'heavy' krithi, 'kanaka saila viharini'. We will now hear both these krithis in the voice of MS. First, the Ahiri krithi, 'mayamma.' In this recording you get MS singing a slokam from Mee...